BIG BEAR: Push for year-round activities paying off

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A mountain biker rides along a trail as rows of snow making machines sit parked on a hillside at Snow Summit in Big Bear Lake on Friday, Sept. 16.

A mountain biker carves a line at Snow Summit in Big Bear Lake on Friday, Sept. 16.

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Dave and Alice Drewelow, both of La Jolla, walk along a trail together at Snow Summit in Big Bear Lake on Friday, Sept. 16.

The chair lifts which normally carries skiers and snow boarders in the winter, carry mountain bikers and hikers in the summer at Snow Summit in Big Bear Lake on Friday, Sept. 16.

Scott Durkin, 34, of Big Bear Lake, puts on his goggles before taking his mountain bike for another run down the hill at Snow Summit in Big Bear Lake on Friday, Sept. 16.

A mountain biker rides along a trail as the lake can be seen in the background at Snow Summit in Big Bear Lake on Friday, Sept. 16.

Mountain bikers prepare to take a chair lift up to ride the runs at Snow Summit in Big Bear Lake on Friday, Sept. 16.

Felipe Lipielli, 42, of San Diego, left, and Daniel Zuliani, visiting from Brazil, get ready in the parking lot of Snow Summit to spend the day riding the trails on their mountain bikes in Big Bear Lake on Friday, Sept. 16.

The chair lifts which normally carries skiers and snow boarders in the winter, carry mountain bikers and hikers in the summer at Snow Summit in Big Bear Lake on Friday, Sept. 16.

Inland Southern California’s popular mountain playground is about to enter its rock-star winter season when the skiers rock and snowboarders roll. But Big Bear’s less glamorous sister is getting a closer look these days, too.

And it may not be long before summer rivals winter.

Pam Scannell, Big Bear Chamber of Commerce executive director, said the picturesque town in the beloved San Bernardino Mountains draws 6 million visitors a year. And while a precise breakdown isn’t available, she said, about 55 percent visit in winter compared to 45 percent.

That’s a big change from the 2-to-1 dominance winter enjoyed 20 years ago, when the chamber launched a visitor bureau to plug Big Bear as a place to visit all year and not just as a haven for winter sports.

“We’ve been working all this time to bring a better balance,” Scannell said in an interview recently. “There were shops that would just close down for the summer because there was no business. They don’t do that now. I can guarantee you that.”

It’s not hard to see why.

‘A BORING PERSON’

People flock to Big Bear during the warm and mostly dry months to take breathtaking zip line rides, shoot down an alpine slide, get their hearts pumping on a high-altitude hike, test their rock climbing skills on a boulder or try out a water sport called flyboarding that looks like something out of an action movie scene.

The latter, Scannell said, is a “James Bond type thing” where participants take to flight above the area’s namesake lake on a double blast of water from the board attached to their feet.

Then there’s the soaring popularity of mountain biking. It’s anchored by an extensive trail system in the nearby national forest and at Snow Summit, which is scheduled to close out its summer season Sunday.

There’s more than one way to measure the meteoric rise of the rugged, adventurous form of cycling. Scannell cited a barometer you might not naturally think of: “The hospital has seen a huge increase in mountain bike injuries.”

Snow Summit measures it in the number of tickets sold for mountain bikers seeking a chairlift ride for themselves and their bikes. Wade Reeser, vice president of operations for Big Bear Mountain Resorts, which operates Snow Summit and Bear Mountain under the corporate umbrella of Mammoth Mountain, said 26,000 such tickets were sold in summer 2014.

Coupled with 29,000 general tickets, Reeser said 55,000 visitors took advantage of the Snow Summit Sky Chair.

Then, of course, there are traditional activities such as camping, fishing, boating, swimming and water skiing. The Pacific Crest Trail that meanders 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada swings through just outside of town.

So don’t gripe to Scannell that there’s nothing to do. You may not get a sympathetic ear.

“We have a basic saying that, ‘If you’re in Big Bear and you’re bored, you must be a boring person,’” she said.

WHO KNEW?

Scott Durkin, 34, has watched the seasonal transformation from a front-row seat. He lives a few blocks from the Snow Summit parking lot. Even before he moved to the area nine years ago, he had been coming to Big Bear since the early 1990s.

The avid snowboarder and competitive mountain biker, who commutes down the mountain a few days a week to a firefighter-paramedic job with the Hermosa Beach Fire Department, said the level of activity has steadily risen.

“It was a lot quieter town before,” Durkin said. “And now it’s becoming more of a tourist destination – because it has more to offer to more people.”

Big Bear is certainly a busier place in the offseason than it was 30 years ago, when Dave and Alice Drewelow of San Diego began coming up regularly – to ski in winter and hike in summer.

They were hiking a 3.5-mile loop near the 8,200-foot top of Snow Summit last weekend. They kept a watchful eye out for the hundreds of young mountain bikers in helmets and protective clothing who were circling the park and catching air along a spiderweb of cycling trails.

“And this is October,” Alice Drewelow remarked. “Who would have thought anyone would be here in October?”

JUMPING OFF POINT

Snow Summit has enjoyed a surge of interest since reopening to mountain bikes in 2013 and unveiling a redesigned trail network, Reeser said. That in turn, he said, has generated more traffic from people who just want to ride to the top of mountain and have lunch, or use the lift as a jumping-off point for other activities.

The resort offered mountain biking earlier. But a rider was injured and sued the resort, leading officials to cancel the activity in 2005 out of concern for liability. They recently decided to bring the sport back.

It may add more activities down the road.

“We’d like to get into the zip line business,” Reeser said. “We’d like to expand our mountain biking. We’ve talked about a climbing wall.”

All of those things would boost activity. But, in a blip on the long-term trend, Snow Summit visits this season are on pace to come in a little under last year’s 55,000 total, Reeser said.

He said that’s due to a shorter summer season. In 2014, resort officials stretched it from April to November. This year they launched in late May.

Another factor was the massive Lake fire that tore across 49 square miles of the San Bernardino Mountains in early summer, he said, saying visits plummeted for two weeks.

SUMMER once REIGNed

He blames the fire impact more on bad publicity than the actual threat, noting the fire was several miles from Big Bear and moving away from it.

“They don’t help us at all when they name these fires,” Reeser said of the term Lake fire. It was named for another, much smaller lake, he said, and many would-be visitors wrongly assumed it was named for Big Bear Lake.

“That really did hurt us,” he said.

Still, the pendulum has been swinging away from winter dominance – and it will continue to, officials said.

In the past, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction.

“A hundred years ago it was the lake that brought people up here,” Scannell, the chamber of commerce executive, said.

And for many years summer was the star of the town, she said.

“Then in the ’50s, they brought in a little ski line that dragged people up the hill,” Scannell said.

Skiing caught on. Resorts were established. And by the late 1960s, winter had pushed summer out of the spotlight.

Dave is a general assignment reporter based in Riverside, writing about a wide variety of topics ranging from drones and El Nino to trains and wildfires. He has worked for five newspapers in four states: Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona and California. He earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Colorado State University in 1981. Loves hiking, tennis, baseball, the beach, the Lakers and golden retrievers. He is from the Denver area.